The Forgotten Founding Father Noah Webster's Obsession and the Creation of an American Culture

by Kendall, Joshua

• ISBN13: 9780399156991
• ISBN10: 0399156992
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-04-14
• Publisher: Putnam Adult

Summary

American's own The Professor and the Madman: a story of Noah Webster, author of American English. Noah Webster's name is now synonymous with the dictionary he created, but his story is not nearly so ubiquitous. Webster hobnobbed with various Founding Fathers and was a young confidant of George Washington and Ben Franklin. He started America's first daily newspaper, predating Alexander Hamilton's New York Post. His "blue-backed speller" for schoolchildren sold millions of copies and influenced early copyright law. But perhaps most important, Webster was an ardent supporter of a unified, definitively American culture, distinct from the British, at a time when the United States of America were anything but unified-and his dictionary of American English is a testament to that.

Author Biography

Joshua Kendall is a language enthusiast and an award-winning freelance journalist whose work has appeared in such publications as The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, and Psychology Today. He lives in Boston.

Table of Contents

Prologue: George Washington's Cultural Attaché: The Definer of American Identity	p. 1
From Farmboy to Best-Selling Author
Hartford Childhood and Yale Manhood	p. 11
Spelling the New Nation	p. 54
Traveling Salesman	p. 78
Founding Father
Counting His Way across America	p. 103
Courtship at the Constitutional Convention	p. 130
Marriage and a Turn Away from Words	p. 155
Editor of New York City's First Daily	p. 183
Lexicographer
Setting His Sights on Johnson and Johnson	p. 209
Paterfamilias	p. 237
A Lost Decade	p. 257
The Walking Dictionary	p. 285
ôMore Fleshy Than Ever Beforeö	p. 309
Epilogue: Webster's after Webster: The Director of Defining	p. 329
Acknowledgments	p. 335
A Note on Sources	p. 338
Illustration Credits	p. 346
Index	p. 347
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